I'm never one to shy away from a challenge that involves a relatively equal playing field involving some crapshoot guesswork, so when we decided to go ahead and do our Eleven Warriors Bowl Challenge this year, I was armed and ready for action. I had done all the prerequisite legwork (briefly glancing at the W-L record of teams I had never heard of), made some tough choices (picked the team with the coolest mascot), and came up with a set of picks that I am very confident is going to do some damage as the bowl season goes on (I tried to change some of them yesterday and then realized that I couldn't).
You did us dirty, Arkansas State!
The fruits of my labor so far are a 4-2 record and a tie for 24th place in the overall Eleven Warriors Official standings, which I'm pretty happy with. Still, there are 23 savants ahead of all of us with identical 5-1 records, and of all the entries on ESPN.com, those lucky few are currently kicking the crap out of 99.5 percent of the rest of us. Congrats to the lucky few who didn't get utterly screwed by the Red Wolves in the Camellia Bowl.
FLY IN THE OINTMENT OF THE WEEK
The aforementioned Cameilla Bowl. I don't know anything about the Arkansas State Red Wolves except that they were heavy favorites against Middle Tennessee State, a school that sounds like one of the opponents in The Waterboy, and then proceeded to screw around for three quarters while MTSU built an insurmountable lead. Great job guys.
DUMBEST UPCOMING PICK
Right now ESPN gives Army a 13% chance of beating San Diego State University on Saturday, which a smarter person would've looked at and immediately picked the Aztecs. But since they're playing in the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl, I felt it was my patriotic duty to go ahead and select the Black Knights. I will take my L with pride.
There's still a lot of football to play, and with the first weekend in the tank, the prize is still up for grabs for pretty much anyone to claim. Keep an eye on the standings, and we'll keep updating you about who is leading the way to victory.
